


The Fall

by zealousprince



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Community: rs_games, First War with Voldemort, M/M, Marauders, R/S Games 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-18 19:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8172974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zealousprince/pseuds/zealousprince
Summary: R/S Games 2016 - Day 1 - Team PlaceThey've told you that dying is like falling asleep, but to you it just feels like falling. But before you fall, you remember.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **Team:** Place  
>  **Title:** The Fall  
>  **Rating:** PG for non-explicit sexual content  
>  **Warnings:** none  
>  **Genre:** Angst, Canon  
>  **Word Count:** 4600  
>  **Summary:** They've told you that dying is like falling asleep, but to you it just feels like falling. But before you fall, you remember.  
>  **Notes:** The moment I had finished listening to this song, I punched the air and yelled IT'S GOING TO BE SO SAD!! Which probably says a lot about me.  
>  Infinite thanks to my beta reader S, who continues to dazzle and humble me with her marvelous insight and eye for useless filler text. Comme toujours, je serais perdu sans mon éditrice.  
>  **Prompt:** #7 ["The Bed Song", Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sW4dwXXX7Q)

They've told you, in books and plays and films, that dying is like falling asleep. To you, it just feels like falling. You fall like you've been pushed, suddenly, and you're so surprised you can't even flail, can't even fight. So you fall through drapes that feel soft as cobwebs on your skin, and the light fades around you like the gentle tumbling-down of dusk.

You strain for one last look, like you've always done in dreams, and like in a dream your vision crumbles faster the harder you try to make things out. But you do see Harry -- how you've longed to see him, for years and years and years and years -- and you do see Remus -- and how you've longed to see him again _I'm going Moony I'm so sorry_ \-- and then you see nothing else, nothing after the look on Remus' face that takes you back to the place where you were before, where you both were, not falling apart like this but together. And you remember in a rush and howl of wind that it was so--

 

"--cold, Moony, get in here already."

Remus doesn't bother saying "I'm coming" because you both know he is, as inevitably as the full moon rises every month. So you stay quiet as he brushes his teeth and flosses, meticulously, like always, as though anyone will care about the state of anyone's teeth when they could all be dead by tomorrow.

When Remus goes around to his side of the bed and climbs in, his movements are slow and careful. He favours his left side. You had already noticed that he had held the toothbrush with his right hand, although it made him fumble. Once upon a time you would have jokingly offered to brush his teeth for him, and then he would have bared his canines at you, pretend-feral, and you both would have laughed.

As it stands, all you do is watch him from the bed and wonder for the hundredth time how he was injured, when, by whom. If you could have prevented it, if you had been there.

Remus lays down on his right side, though he hates to do it. This puts him with his back to you. You tell yourself that it's not your fault. That it's completely your fault. That it's Remus' fault, entirely, for pushing you and pushing you until you're so far away you feel like you can barely see him anymore.

You reach out to turn off the light. The darkness covers you like a blanket. You search for the outline of Remus' shoulder in the dark. You think of searching for it with your hands, but you don't dare, because it will hurt even more if Remus recoils from your touch.

It's so cold, cold enough that you think your breath could mist in the air, cold enough that you shiver even under the quilted duvet. You had both agreed to this flat because you figured you would deal with burst pipes whenever it happened, and the cold of the London winter could be kept at bay with your shared body warmth. But you hadn't thought that you would ever become like this, trapped on your opposite sides of the bed. You hadn't thought that the person -- boy, young man, ageing worn-out veteran of war -- that you call your lover and friend would ever willingly draw away from you, like your touch is toxic. Like it is exhausting. Like your own warm flesh, freely shared, is no longer a balm but a burden, just one more body to carry to the place where you've laid all your friends' bodies down to rest.

So you lay there, alone, eyes open in the dark. You wonder if perhaps you are lucid dreaming, if you have been this entire time. Since Hogwarts. Since the start of the war. Since birth. The long, slow-brewing nightmare of years.

Remus breathes like he's trying not to breathe too hard. You want to ask if he's in pain, if it's from the coming moon or from something else, if you can do anything to help. If you can hold him, just for a moment.

But you haven't asked, not for a long while.

You breathe shallowly for a time, trying to muster something -- a scream, tears, _anything_ \-- that will draw you both out of your stupor, out of the silent, separate rooms of your individual hearts. But you can't think of anything. There is no stroke of genius, no marvelous spark of inspiration. Like you've lost the habit of feeling love.

You tell yourself that this isn't true. Because of course you love Remus, there's no way that you couldn't. And there's no way that Remus could not love you, because Remus is here beside you and he is always there for those he loves. It doesn't matter that his side of the bed feels a thousand miles away. It doesn't matter that you haven't touched, not really, in weeks. In months. It doesn't matter because you will always be here with him, to protect him and love him, even if it's from afar. Even if he never looks you in the eye again for as long as you both live.

"Sirius."

It takes you a moment to respond. Remus' voice is so quiet, a mere breath, that you could pretend you didn't hear. The truth is you've been waiting for so long to hear him speak to you that you're surprised and unsure what to do.

Finally, you say, "Remus." Your voice sounds too loud in the darkness.

Remus doesn't turn, doesn't move at all. You sense in your chest, like a shift of the air pressure in the room, that his breathing has changed again.

"Remus?" you say again. You half turn, but stop yourself in time.

"Sirius," Remus says, "I have to tell you something."

And now you do turn, because Remus' voice has grown in urgency, though his whisper is still as frail as the sound of the wind scraping against the high narrow window of your basement flat. You wait for Remus to go on, but he is quiet for so long that he could have fallen asleep. You shift closer, just a little, your hand hovering just outside the covers. 

"Go on," you say, at length. "I'm listening."

"I know," Remus says roughly, like there's something lodged in his throat. "I can't."

"But you just said--"

"I know what I said. And I also know I can't tell you. No matter how much I want to. How much I _need_ \--"

 _He needs you_. The knowledge hits you with such searing clarity that you are momentarily struck breathless. It feels like falling in love all over again.

You move even closer, though every nerve in your body tingles with alarm. You can't stay away, not now. "Remus...Moony, tell me what it is."

Remus shakes his head against the pillow, curling in tighter around himself. He hisses and clutches his left arm with his right hand. Even in the dark, you can see his fingers clench tight as claws.

You do the only thing you can. You go to him and gather him into your arms, your chest against his tensely bowed back. You sense that he fights you for a moment, and you tell yourself that if he wants it you will pull away, even if it breaks your heart.

But Remus does not ask you to pull away. Instead he rolls, frantically, in your arms, and clutches your waist like he always used to. You are concerned that he is lying on his injured arm but he doesn't seem to care or even feel the pain anymore, or else the pain in his heart is just too great.

"I'm so sorry," Remus says. His breath against your skin feels wonderful.

You tell him he has nothing to be sorry for and hold him tight against you. You hold each other like you're drowning. You hold each other like you're dying. You hold each other--

 

"--too tight, Sirius! Are you trying to strangle me?"

You pout as you try to nudge the necktie knot a little higher. "Stop being such a baby. You want to look good for James and Lily's big affair, don't you?"

Remus takes the ends of the necktie from your hands and loosens the knot around his collar. He gives a huge exaggerated gasp for air, but recovers quickly enough to say, in his usual dry tone, "You can call the event by its name, Sirius. They're getting married."

You make a sound of elegant disdain. "So I've been told."

"I thought you were happy for them."

"I am. I'm not happy for me, is the thing."

Remus undoes your careful necktie work and starts doing it back up himself. He doesn't even turn to look in the shaving mirror for it, which really makes you wonder why he let you try to do it up for him in the first place.

Robbed of your knot tying duties, you glance around as though you stand in a stranger's house. The den of the house in Godric's Hollow is little more than a cellar but you have called it home ever since you all moved here after leaving Hogwarts. The guest wing is Peter's -- you call it the guest wing though it's nothing like the sinister and expansive guest wing at 12 Grimmauld Place, no more than a shoebox-sized bedroom with mismatched curtains -- but he's gone more often than not, on a string of missions he can tell no one about. He always comes back eventually, so you keep the room aired out and tidy for him.

But James and Lily are getting married now, which means they need the house more than you do. More specifically the third addition to the family -- on its way now, and James is utterly convinced it's a girl -- needs the house more than you do, so like a good and obliging extended family you are going to go. Your things have already gone ahead and are sitting in boxes and trunks in the new (old, ancient) basement flat you and Remus are going to rent in London. Where Peter will go you aren't yet sure, but he has told you he has a plan, and it never occurred to you to doubt him.

As he loops the tie over and over itself, Remus asks you, "Why are you not happy for you?"

"I was kidding," you say, unconvincingly.

Remus raises his eyebrows at you and finishes doing up the knot. It's perfect, of course, but you reach out to fuss with it anyway, for the excuse to touch him. Remus clasps his hands demurely behind his back and lets you.

"It's not because of them," you say after fiddling for as long as you are able. "It's because of this damn war. I'm afraid something will happen."

Remus has that crease he gets between his eyes, the one that folds the long scar he has across his brow in half. "And?"

"And," you scoff. "I suppose I'm a little jealous. Which is stupid, I know."

Remus gently parts your hands so he can smooth your lapels. You'll both be wearing Muggle suits under your outer robes, because Lily likes the cut of them on you both, and you like the cut of it on Remus.

"Why?" Remus asks. Two questions in one.

You toy a little with your hair. Remus takes the hint and adjusts the fall of your fringe over your brow.

"How do I look?" you ask cheerfully, once he's done.

Remus looks you over very seriously, then nods, like an artist satisfied with his work. "Good. Fit to be married, even."

That makes you sigh, though you didn't intend to. "That's just the thing."

Remus is quiet for a long while. He doesn't look at your face anymore, but fixes and primps you all over, right down to the break of your trousers. When he straightens again, he gently clasps both of your hands in his.

"So that's it, then," he says.

He rubs his thumb over your ring finger but doesn't say anything more. Neither do you. You both know what he means.

Then you say, "Remus. Come to bed with me."

That makes him raise his eyes at last. His smile is wry and incredibly dear. "The ceremony is in half an hour."

"Not for that." You clasp his hands tighter, draw him closer to the bed in the corner. "Just to sit, for a while. I need you."

"He needs me, does he?" Remus says, but he goes.

It feels very empty down here, with only the bed -- two old mattresses stacked on the threadbare carpet -- and the shaving mirror and the last of your clothes. So you hurry to pull Remus against you, for warmth. You pull him down until you're both lying across the bare mattress, limbs intertwined, faces close together.

"You said to sit," Remus says. He shifts so he can comfortably rest his head on your shoulder, and twines his arms around your waist in that way he likes to do.

There is nothing to do but kiss him then, so you do. You love how he tips his face up to meet yours, how his mouth and his hands open to you. James and Lily are going to be married in twenty seven minutes and you will never be so you kiss him and kiss him until you've convinced yourself it doesn't matter, it never did, all that matters is Remus, here, now, so close and so _yours_ it's like a dream, the kind of dream where you run and run and run until you find yourself--

 

\--breathless, heaving, grasping, calling his name in a ragged whisper though the Silencing spell around the curtains would allow you to scream.

"Sirius," Remus whimpers, and the sound of your name on his lips is so _good_ that you can't help tumbling over the edge. 

Almost literally, as it turns out. Your right arm flails through the heavy velvet curtain, your shoulder and head tipping over the edge of your dormitory bed, and Remus has to grab your hand and steady you before you both capsize.

"Careful," he says, his voice still trembling with pleasure. 

He tugs you back from the precipice by your hips, and that feels sort of fantastic so you press your hands to his to tell him to keep them there, and he does. You lay there together for a time, spiralling slowly back down to reality. Perhaps you doze a little, with Remus' hands on your hips and one of your hands in his hair.

Then you jolt awake, your limbs twitching reflexively as you fight the plummeting feeling of falling asleep. You hate this feeling because it makes you feel like you're dying, makes your heart kick like it's trying to save you from something you can't see or feel or understand. You curse aloud, without meaning to, and instantly Remus stirs against you.

"Padfoot?" His hand slides up, searching for yours. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," you answer, as breathless as though you're recovering from a nightmare.

Remus leans into you, his naked skin sliding so deliciously against yours that you moan a little. When Remus raises his head to look at you, he's smiling all the way up to his eyes.

There's something in those eyes that you can't quite decipher. It feels important, but like the half-dream that just left you it flees, just beyond reach of your waking mind. So you let the moment pass, though not without pressing a reassuring kiss to Remus' forehead and pulling him over you, so that your legs can intertwine.

"I'm wonderful," you add, to clarify.

"You are." Remus nuzzles his unshaven cheek against your neck, which feels scratchy and weird and amazing.

"Told you I would be."

"You didn't tell me it would take weeks to get up to speed."

You consider being offended, but everything feels too good, so you just pinch him gently in the arm. "Oi. I was taking my time."

Remus hums, completely unrepentant. His arms move down to encircle your waist.

You don't say that it was worth it, the taking of time. You don't say that it's the first time it's felt this good, this right to be with someone like this. Because Remus is quiet again and his arms are loosening though he doesn't let go, which means he's finally falling asleep. 

There's a chance James and Peter and Gideon will find you like this when they return from Hogsmeade but for now you don't much care. All that matters is the rhythm of Remus' breathing and the scent of your mingled sweat in the warm air, and all the things you can say to him later when you're awake. Things like how much you like the assurance in his voice when he answers a question in class, or how you like to watch him run his fingers over his quill as he's writing an essay.

There will be time later, you believe, as the lights go out around you and your mind spins down into sleep, to tell him just how much you--

 

\-- _love you so much, Remus, how can you not know!_

The cobwebs grasp at you and you fall, helpless against the inexorable gravity pull of your own death. For it is your death that is coming for you now, like you've desired and feared for so long. You thought you would die a captive man in Azkaban but instead death finds you here, in the heart of the Ministry that betrayed you, among the friends who betrayed you, beside the godson you've wanted to meet for so long and the lover you haven't gotten to touch since that night when you came back from the dead.

"You're here," Remus had gasped in your ear. You had nodded and wished he would wrap his arms around your waist like before.

But that touch had been fleeting and your words even more so, and now you're here and you're leaving and Remus is staying behind, again. And not just him but Harry too, who will never have all the things you wanted to do, all the stories you wanted to tell, all the love you wanted to give.

Your heart kicks just once, but already your body is unable to respond, and you only sink deeper and deeper into the darkness. Harry reaches; you reach too, you have to, because you don't want to leave without him knowing you would have done anything to stay.

 _I'm not ready_ , you think, uselessly, inanely, and oddly enough the thought is enough for you to solidify, enough for the curtains to twine around your limbs and begin to pull.

 _I'm not ready. I'm not_ \--

 

"--ready, do you think?"

The question takes you off guard, not because of the question itself but because you're so unused to hearing Remus' voice like this: exhausted, hoarse, fractured. But then, you've gone mad and nearly died and then come back, so you probably don't sound much better.

It takes you a while to respond. Remus waits behind you, doesn't move an inch as far as you can tell. He did always used to do that, to wait patiently until the other person gave in before his expectant silence and told him what he wanted to know. That was how he got things out of most people.

At the other end of the house, the grandfather clock sounds, loud as a gong. You hate it as much as you hated it as a child. You almost wish Mother would start wailing again, so you'd have something to scream at.

You are lying on the scrolled divan in the parlour, where once upon a time you'd lain to read and to bother Regulus as he tried to do his lessons over there on the floor. You don't move as you finally reply, your voice rough and disused, "No, I don't think he's ready. He's fifteen."

Remus says, "For fifteen, he's rather extraordinary."

You say, "When we were fifteen, we were still nicking things from the kitchens and setting off Dungbombs in the Slytherin common room."

Remus says, "If a little rough around the edges. But he's had a difficult time."

This makes you bark out a laugh. It hurts, in your throat and somewhere deep in your chest, where your heart should be. "Of course he's had a difficult time. James and Lily are dead. I've been locked up and you've been--Merlin knows where."

You know this must hurt him but you don't really care right now, and anyway if you'd truly crossed a line then Remus would tell you. Or so you believe. The truth is you don't really know Remus anymore. It's not just that he looks and acts older than before. There's a distance between you that was never there before, not even when you were schoolchildren and just getting to know each other. It's like a wall has grown between you that you can't scale.

The truth is, it's been growing since the First War, since you stopped understanding what the other meant when he spoke. You don't understand Remus now, what he's trying to say, and it makes you miserable and angry in the same way it did back then.

"Harry," you say harshly, "is a child. We should be the ones protecting him from Voldemort, not the other way around."

"Of course," Remus says. "I didn't mean--"

"I don't care what you meant!" Your arm lashes out, like you're trying to rise from the divan, but you don't have the energy for it. "I don't care, Remus! Leave me alone."

Remus is quiet for a long while. You hear him move closer, the ancient floorboards creaking under him.

He says, "I won't. Not again."

His voice catches on 'again', and you should feel sorry for him but you don't. You think maybe the Dementors took the part of you that can feel sympathy. Which explains why your chest feels so hollow all the time, and why you can't seem to get warm.

Remus moves even closer, close enough that you can feel him standing right there behind the divan. You force yourself not to react when he places his hand on the backrest. You're afraid that he will try to touch you, but he doesn't. You almost wish that he would, anyway.

"Sirius--"

"What."

"Sirius."

You wait. You try not to tremble, though the room is deathly cold.

Remus sighs. His hand slides over the divan's backrest, his fingertips scuffing the worn-out damask upholstery.

"Sirius. I'm sorry."

"Hn."

"I am. Truly, I am."

"For what?" you say obtusely.

"For everything. For not fighting harder to keep you out of Azkaban. For not--" His voice catches again, almost stops. "--for not telling you everything."

You remember. The Dementors didn't take that from you, because it never a happy memory to begin with.

You didn't remember this in Azkaban but you do now. You remember how even though you were both miserable and alone, and you clung to each other not out of love but out of desperation, there was still something. Something warm and certain in the pit of your stomach that no man or Dementor could take from you. Even if they tortured you. Even if they killed you.

Remus says, his voice stiff like he's trying very hard to keep it steady, "I should have told you. You deserved to know. There shouldn't have been any question of it. I failed you and I'm sorry."

That's the point where his words break, and he takes a terrible breath and turns away. This makes you surge up from the divan, though every bone in your body aches, and grab his wrist before he can leave.

He stands rigidly, his face turned away. His wrist feels thinner than it was before, his joints more frail. There are newer scars glistening across the old ones. You think about him spending all of those full moons alone, tearing at himself in his agony, and what's left of your heart breaks in your chest.

"I would have asked," you say, desperate, choking. "I would have asked! But I--I…"

Remus' head bows. He turns slowly to face you. His other hand comes up to cover yours. His hands look so foreign, so ruined and not-his. There was a time when you knew him right down to the pads of his fingers.

"I know," he says. He can't possibly, but he says it anyway. "I know."

There is a moment, a slow suspended moment, when you almost believe you could fix this. James and Lily are dead and Peter is gone but you could still fix this, fix _you_ and _him_ and become _us_ again, or the closest thing to it.

When Remus raises his head and looks into your eyes, he tells you the same thing.

Then the wards chime, like a dozen crashing bells, and Remus has to turn away and rush to the entrance. You follow him, feeling faint and insubstantial as a ghost, and find Kingsley Shacklebolt at the door, chest heaving and eyes wild. 

"It's the boy," Shacklebolt says. "He's gone to the Ministry. The Death Eaters are already on their way."

Time freezes as fear skates down your spine. You would collapse if your joints weren't already so rigid and dry.

Remus says, "And the others?"

Shacklebolt says, "On their way, as well. But not fast enough."

"Then we have no time to waste." Remus turns to you. "Can you Disapparate?"

You say, "You'll have to help me."

"Of course."

You sense that Remus would have grasped your hand then, but he holds back because Shacklebolt is there, watching. You don't think Kingsley would care much either way but there's no time for that kind of conversation regardless. You run to fetch your wand and leave the house behind Remus and Shacklebolt, feeling the wards shimmer and close behind you, feeling your past shutter and close behind you.

The street is dark and foggy and deserted. Shacklebolt goes on ahead, disappearing with a pop that sounds to you as loud as a gunshot. Then it's just you and Remus on the sidewalk. It's so cold that you shake uncontrollably, your wand shuddering in your hand.

Remus wraps his fingers around yours. He hasn't had time to pull on his threadbare gloves so his hands are cold too. You remember a time when you would have offered to warm him up, and you remember that you would have taken all night to do so, and maybe you wouldn't have exchanged a single coherent word through it all but you would have understood, implicitly, every single thing about him.

"I'm sorry, too," you say to him. You've lost the trick of reading each other's lips and eyes and skin, so now you have only words. But words are a start.

Remus looks at you and his expression is very sad, but it's a little hopeful too. He holds your hand tight and says, "Let's go" so you do.

You go.

 

And the Veil says, _Go_ , so you do.


End file.
